Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects.
LED-based lighting fixtures, arrays, and systems have been implemented that enable groups of light sources in the lighting fixtures to be individually controlled. For example, LED-based lighting array may include a plurality of LED segments, each containing one or more LEDs, that may be individually controlled (e.g., segments that may be individually turned on/off). A controller may be utilized to individually control each of the LED segments. Although such LED-based lighting fixtures enable individualized control of LED segments, the sensors that provide data to the controller to enable the controller to determine how to control each of the LED segments may have one or more drawbacks. For example, passive infrared (PIR) sensors and/or acoustic sensors may be utilized to provide data to a controller concerning presence of an individual and the controller may activate LED segments upon detection of presence of an individual. However, PIR sensors may be bulky, consume too much power, and/or be overly sensitive to heat thereby limiting options for implementation in a lighting unit. Also, acoustic sensors may be bulky, consume too much power, and/or be overly sensitive to noise thereby limiting options for implementation in a lighting unit.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide lighting units and arrays, addressing one or more drawbacks of existing solutions.